Magicians 2 - The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Author:Lev Grossman [Grossman, Lev]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780452298019
Published: 2012-05-29T00:00:00+00:00
There was a time when Quentin could probably have said it along with her from memory.
Quentin sat in the car and stared across the road. He couldnât see much evidence of anything as nice as that. The place didnât exactly scream âportal to another worldâ either. He tried to imagine the Chatwins arriving here for the first time, the five of them crammed into the backseat of some sputtering black proto-automobile, more carriage than car, and with a fair amount of locomotive DNA in it as well, their luggage tied to the boot with twine and Victorian leather strappage. They would have been funereally silent, resigned to exile from London. The youngest, five-year-old Jane, the future Watcherwoman, reclining on her older sisterâs lap as on a chaise longue, lost in a fog of longing for her parents, who were respectively fighting World War I and raving in a posh rest home. Martin (who would grow up to become a monster who would kill Alice) keeping his composure for the sake of the youngsters, his soft boyâs jaw set in grim preadolescent determination.
Theyâd been so young and innocent and hopeful, and theyâd found something more wonderful than they could ever have hoped for, and it had destroyed them.
âWhat do you think?â he said. âJulia?â
âThis is the place.â
âAll right. Iâm going to go in. Look around.â
âIâll come,â Poppy said.
âNo,â Quentin said. âI want to go alone.â
To his surprise it worked. She stayed put.
Becoming invisible was a simple idea in theory, but in practice it was a lot harder than youâd think. It had been done, but it took years of meticulous self-erasure, and once accomplished it was practically impossible to undo; apart from anything else you could never be sure youâd reinstated your visible self completely accurately. You came out looking like a portrait of yourself. The best work-around Quentin knew was more like an animalâs protective coloring. If you were standing in front of some leaves, you looked drab and leafy. If you werenât moving or jumping around, an observerâs eye tended to skate over you. Usually. If the light wasnât too good. The car door chunked shut in the stillness. He felt the othersâ eyes on his back as he crossed the road.
There was something on top of the stone post: buttons. They were scattered in the grass around it too. Big ones, small ones, pearly ones, tortoiseshells. It must be a fan ritual. You come by, you leave a button, the way people left joints on Jim Morrisonâs grave.
Still, he stopped and touched each of them, one by one, just to make sure none of them were genuine.
The camouflage spell was unbelievably crude. He picked up a big leathery oak leaf, snapped off a shingle of bark from a tree, plucked a blade of the scanty grass, and collected a granite pebble from the edge of the road. He whispered a rhyming chant in French over them, spat on them, andâthe glamorous life of the modern sorcererâstuffed them in his pocket.
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